Then I just copied the sources.list netselect-apt created to my /etc/apt/ folder and ran apt-get update again.

Presto!

So what does netselect-apt do actually? First it downloads a list of all the worldwide mirrors from the official Debian website using wget. Then it pings each and every server to see which one is nearer to the physical location of your server. Finally it writes a sources.list file in the current directory. Do note however that it doesn’t speed-test every server, but only measures the latency between the mirror and your box. So to be precise you’re getting the nearest server, not the fastest. In todays networks though, with 100Mbps and 1Gbps uplinks, it’s almost certain that the nearest server will also be the fastest too.

We are pleased to announce the new beta of our Japan cloud (Tokyo). We are offering old and new customers up to 9 beta nodes for free to test out the location.

Highlights include:
– The fastest, most technically advanced enterprise class SAN within all of our clouds
– Full support for Windows and Linux
– Full OnApp 2.2 support will be enabled during the beta
– Its Free!

VPS.NET just launched their Tokyo cloud today in beta. According to them, this new cloud features an all-new SAN deployment which will resolve issues like their recent (and not only) 50h downtime + customer data loss. SAN failures have been a major issue at VPS.NET during the last year and many customers who didn’t had their own backup strategy lost all their data because of file corruption after a SAN crash (hint: don’t rely on VPS.NET backups -unless R1Soft- and always have your own backup strategy!)